Sediment-quality assessment often is hindered by the lack of agreement between chemical and biological lines of evidence. One limitation is that the bulk sediment toxicant concentration, the most widely used chemical parameter, does not always represent the bioavailable concentration, particularly for hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) in highly contaminated sediments. In the present study, w...

Terpenes emitted by conifer trees are generally determined by analysing plant extracts or essential oils, prepared from foliage and cones using steam distillation. The application of these procedures limits experiments to cut plant materials. Recently headspace techniques have been adopted to examine terpene emission by living plants. This paper deals with the application of solid-phase micro-e...

The aim of this study was to compare two extraction procedures: dynamic headspace-purge and trap (PT) and headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) for gas chromatographic determination of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and isomeric xylenes (BTEX) in urine with photoionization (PID) and mass spectrometric (MS) detection, respectively. Both methods showed linearity in the range of interes...

Disposable solid-phase microextraction fibers (SPMEs) were used to measure the availability of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and its two primary transformation products, 2-amino-4,6-dinitrotoluene (2ADNT) and 4-amino-2,6-dinitrotoluene (4ADNT). The SPMEs (85-microm polyacrylate) and sediment-dwelling oligochaetes (Tubifex tubifex) were exposed to TNT-spiked sediment, to TNT-spiked sediment amende...

© 2010 ETRI Journal, Volume 32, Number 3, June 2010 Array-based gas sensors now offer the potential of a robust analytical approach to odor measurement for medical use. We are developing a fast reliable method for detection of microbial infection by monitoring the headspace from the infected wound. In this paper, we present initial results obtained from wound-state monitoring for burn patients ...

This study describes the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in water using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with fluorescence detection (FLD). Because individual PAHs are generally present in water only at trace levels, a sensitive and accurate determination technique is essential. The separation and detection of five PAHs were run completely within 25...

Plants produce various volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are thought to be a crucial factor in their interactions with harmful insects, plants and animals. Composition of VOCs may differ when plants are grown under different nutrient conditions, i.e., macronutrient-deficient conditions. However, in plants, relationships between macronutrient assimilation and VOC composition remain unclea...

Determination of the analyte-specific distribution coefficient between the aqueous and sorbing phases is required for estimation of the aqueous-phase concentration of the analyte of interest using polymeric materials. Poly(dimethylsiloxane)-coated solid-phase microextration (PDMS-SPME) fiber-water partition coefficient (K(f)) values for eight common-use pyrethroids were determined using a two-c...

Passive sampling was used to deduce water concentrations of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the vicinity of a marine Superfund site on the Palos Verdes Shelf, California, USA. Precalibrated solid phase microextraction (SPME) fibers and polyethylene (PE) strips that were preloaded with performance reference compounds (PRCs) were codeployed for 32 d along an 11-station gradient at bottom,...

RNA contains a large number of modified nucleosides. In the metabolic re-exchange of RNA, modified nucleosides cannot be recycled and are thus excreted from cells into biological fluids. Determination of endogenous modified nucleosides in biological fluids may serve as non-invasive cancers diagnostic methods. Here we prepared boronate-affinity organic-silica hybrid capillary monolithic column (...